


Hallowed Thorns and All Their Climbing Roses

by Chromat1cs



Series: Deepwood Wreathing [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Anal Sex, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Finger Sucking, Hand & Finger Kink, Jealousy, Kissing, M/M, Magical Realism, Nobility, Pining, Prostitution, Rentboys, Semi-Public Sex, Sirius Black Hates Parties, coming on clothes, is a carriage private or public bc I can see both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-03 04:24:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17277008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Masquerade balls are for toffs. Sirius Black would never consider himself a toff, but how can one ignore the pull of Fate herself when Remus is wearing a wolf’s mask and Sirius can hardly draw breath from across the hall?





	Hallowed Thorns and All Their Climbing Roses

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaaaand it’s Explicit. I tried to skirt around it but there are only so many euphamisms for Doing The Deed™️—skirting it was starting to feel contrived, and sometimes it just feels nice to type “COCK.” Yaknow?
> 
> If you catch the references to Koja’s “Bastard’s Paradise,” you win every ounce of my adoration.
> 
> Thanks for coming back to this one, you all are lovely <3

Parties are not surprising. Especially when thrown by Lucius Malfoy, and _especially_ when he makes it a fucking masquerade ball. The routine is rote for Sirius by this point: arrive twenty minutes past the invitation’s printed start time, grit his teeth through the stuffy announcement of his house at the foot of Lucius’ hideous grand staircase, drown himself in champagne, or wine, or both, for an hour-and-a-half—no more, no less—and return home before he embarrasses himself with stiff dancing or one too many stilted conversations. It’s a pattern that’s held for the last three years, and Sirius hardly expects that to change now.

But, as he’s lately forgotten is the case nowadays, Fate has other hideous ideas about what to do with Sirius’s presumptions.

Without a single shred of doubt, the young man across the ballroom in a wolf-shaped half-mask is Remus.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Lord Sirius Black of Essex!” The sergeant at arms thuds his staff on the floor as the attentions of most of the partygoers flicker to him in disinterested acknowledgement—leftover heir, nobody’s favorite sapling out of the other branches lost to bad fortune over the years, _You know they say that one is queer, don’t you?_ —before resuming their thrumming conversations at hand. Sirius pays the affronts no mind. Remus is here, dressed in finery that in no way belongs to him, and looking straight at Sirius with amusement evident even from behind the weeds of decorated illusion. Sirius hasn’t had him since last week, he realizes with a little scratching pang at the back of his skull—it’s been nearly seven long days that he hasn’t seen that grin from below him, predator’s mouth playing at prey, opening with a laugh or a gasp or—

“Champagne, sir?”

Sirius’ attention flicks to the servant arriving at his side with a tall tray of bubbling crystal flutes, a man with a well-groomed mustache outfitted in a simple colombina eye mask. “My compliments on your costume,” he offers with a honed waiter’s bow of his head. Sirius clears his head with his own shallow bow.

“Yes, thank you.” Sirius tips plucks a glass from the tray and lets his breath out in a slow, noiseless exhale. He focuses on the compliment, a default greeting meant only to preen the partygoers, as Sirius is only in a simple fine tailcoat suit and spat shoes with the same half-bauta mask shaped like a fox’s face that he always digs up for these disasters.

The servant moves off while Sirius looks immediately back to where Remus is standing, and his insides flare to notice the masher beside the young man in an obnoxious pantalone mask wind an arm around Remus’ waist. Remus laughs animatedly at something his client murmurs into his ear, and the acuity with which he catches Sirius’ eye in the moment is a violent show of devilry and wit. _Come and catch me then, messire, if you dare._

The string quintet is suddenly too loud and the ballroom feels flush with heat, _one-two-three, two-two-three,_ Viennese monstrosity sawing about as though it’s New Year’s—Sirius dodges somebody’s wide skirt, a woman in a glittering volta with a serpent’s eyes behind it when she glances sharply at him for the stumble. He has no idea who it might be, only that he recognizes the man beside her as one who takes guttersnipes behind the alleyway after too many drinks at the club outside of Mayfair, but raises a hand in apologetic silence nonetheless. Sirius downs a draught of champagne, half the glass in one go, and wills himself to still.

_Don’t bite. He’s isn’t here for you._

The compulsion to beeline directly to Remus and his client is a compression in his lungs like ice in a drainpipe, but he ignores it if only for the semblance of sanity it gives him to think on things that aren’t the rent boy in a fashion besides a sport coat and trousers. To imagine Remus in tails and a tophat is something that has only been a daydream up until this point, a fantasy writ secretively into the annals of Sirius’ mind that he would never dare spill to the young man. _Fancy coming out in public with me, but not just any public, a party with all sorts of onlookers?_ Clearly this client has a different way of going about his habits.

Sirius stays his hand from gripping dangerously hard at the stem of his drink.

He moseys around the wide dancefloor for several long minutes, avoiding glances and making sure his frown is just carved-in enough to put off any potential approaches for talk of business or, God forbid, the weather in London. It’s chatter he could normally put up with, except currently his mind is filled so thick with distraction that Sirius is liable to shout _Did you know that fucking Saint Sebastian himself is just over there?_ at the first hint of a handshake extended his way. It’s a perfect disaster, but not quite the sort that calls for grief.

With banal attention, Sirius blazes through the rest of his champagne and three-quarters of a second glass while he watches a few numbers of the waltz whirling around on the parquet floor. He picks Lucius out immediately, wearing a ridiculous black-and-green mask all rimmed with lace, holding his stiff-backed fianceé with a controlling grip to make her look very like a frightened bird in a cage trying her best to smile. Sirius is about to inwardly curse the man for dragging together these farcical fetes three times a year, but Remus’ unmistakable laughter floats over through the domed acoustics of the ballroom and makes Sirius suddenly forget everything besides the feeling of taking the rent boy to bed for a staggering, terrifying moment.

The thick burn of candlelight at every sconce and edge of the room catches tightly that the corners of Sirius’ eyes through the sides of his mask when he decides to stop denying himself and seek out Remus’ presence again. With a pull at his heart, Sirius finds the young man near the tall yawn of the garden doors, thrown open to the springtime air, with his client still beside him leering hopelessly at the effortless charm Remus exudes without even trying. They’re engaged in what looks like good-humored conversation with the Lord and Lady Weasley, and Sirius hardly knows what his own feet are doing until he realizes he’s but six paces from the gaggle of them and catching Lady Weasley’s notice.

“Lord Black, what a lovely surprise!” She offers her hand with a genuinely pleased smile, and Sirius presses a tidy kiss to the silk on the back of her silk glove with a small greeting bow. Remus’ gaze is burning into him like foxfire—it takes every fiber of control in Sirius’ body not to lunge across the floor and press a much hungrier kiss against the rent boy’s lips instead.

“I would have been remiss not to attend,” Sirius explains shortly. He sketches a low bow to Lord Weasley, who returns it handsomely, and finally allows himself to move his attention to Remus and his client with another encompassing bow. He finds from so near that the man in the long-nosed mask is Edgar Bones, a supreme toff just recently come up into nobility by a minor scandal of newly-honored illegitimacy to a ship merchant, who apparently has a taste for a bit of scandal himself. Remus stands proudly beside the half-drunk man, paling him in comparison, and fixes Sirius with a secretive smile that does awful things to the air in Sirius’ lungs. Awful, glorious things.

Lord Weasley gestures with his champagne at the expanse of the place around them. “It seems there are more and more people invited each time, aren’t there?”

“Perhaps they’re only installing more and more mirrors along the walls to make it feel that way.” Remus’ eyes flash when the Weasleys laugh at his jab along with his client, daring Sirius to laugh as well. Sirius takes a slow sip of champagne instead, barely holding his gaze for a searing moment.

“Ah, where are my manners!” Edgar flails the free hand not holding his drink, looking very much the part of his fool’s mask, and claps Remus’ shoulder. Sirius slides his own free hand into his pocket so as not to throttle the idiot standing. “Lord Black, this is my companion, Lucien.”

Sirius barely holds back on the instinct to raise his eyebrows in disbelief. _Have you a stage name then, Puck?_ “A pleasure to meet you, Lucien.”

“Likewise, Lord Black.” Remus’ eyes are alive with mirth as his tips his own graceful bow at Sirius, a beautiful furl of his limbs in dance-like grace.

“I’ve no desire to intrude on your conversation,” Sirius insists after the half-second it takes to find his words as he drinks in the image of Remus from so near, “I only wished to say hello and find some respite from _la valse.”_

That draws another laugh from the trio and lends Sirius another shaving of a moment to share burning eye contact with Remus. _Lord risen,_ the young man cuts a beautiful figure. Lithe and sure, with the shape of the wolf’s eyes around his own dredging up all sorts of memories from their escape in the winter— _You make it very hard to think of anything besides the way you touch me—_ Sirius kills his second champagne with a tidy toss before his thoughts rattle him to sordid pieces.

“I think you speak for _all_ of us on that count.” Lord Weasley is nodding at him with commiseration and his wife is smiling along with that, one of the only ladies Sirius isn’t entirely sick of these days. He likes the Weasleys, simply for the fact they seem to know exactly when to quit filling a silence.

“Oh, I find Vienna to be absolutely marvelous in the summertime!”

Sirius grits his teeth surreptitiously. The same cannot be said for all nobility.

“It’s got the most beautiful light to all it’s buildings at sundown,” Edgar is oozing as the hand on Remus’ shoulder strokes a slow, meaty thumb along the seam of his shoulder; “if you haven’t seen it you should plan to at some point.” Sirius sees the purposeful curl at the corner of Edgar’s mouth and inwardly wishes for blood.

“Have you lands in Austria, then?” Molly swoops in with accidentally-expert timing fueled by her everlong need to know anything and everything about her peerage.

Edgar shakes his head with a sort of half-shrug that the flaring vindictive side of Sirius finds terribly pedestrian. “I was sent to school outside of Vienna all through boyhood, before returning for university. I got to know the city quite well, though, and I plan on having a home there in the next few years.”

“Oh, how lovely for you.” Molly nods tidily with a kind little smile that Edgar takes far too kindly, not knowing enough about the twists and turns of social politicking to see that it’s the sort of smile that says _Ah yes, you’ve made it clearer that you’re the bastard son kept safe at arms-length only to be dragged back to Oxford when there were no other heirs to take your place._ Sympathy quivers for a moment at the back of Sirius’ tongue, and it dies just as quickly to see Remus touch Edgar’s hand with light acknowledgment.

“I’ve been told it’s a lovely city,” Remus says with a tick of assurance, expert light behind his eyes, the sort that Sirius knows from his first meeting with the young man—testing the waters, not quite batting his lashes but fanning his client’s flame for the promise of more to come. Granted, Sirius had only seen that look for the couple of minutes before they lost themselves in one another through that strange thread they seem to share, neither addressing it directly but seeing straight through to the core of fire that strikes through both of them. But it’s beautiful. Sirius pains distantly, somewhere in the spaces between his bones, to see any if Remus’ beauty directed at somebody who isn’t him.

Let it never be said that Sirius Black has divested himself of _all_ his familial traditions of ire and fury.

The Weasleys move off to follow the behest of the Fenwicks, another pair of nobles from far enough outside the city that Sirius wonders vaguely why they’ve even made the trek in for such a droll evening. Well, perhaps it’s only droll when one’s inclinations are better suited to the dark corners of a dinner club or the light behind the drawn curtains of one’s study. Sirius plucks up another flute of champagne before he looks up and barely keeps the down the surprise of feeling Remus brush past him toward the laden buffet back near the dancing.

“Isn’t he magnificent?”

Sirius drags his attention away from watching the young man’s wordless retreat and can’t help but cut his eyes from the safe shadows of his mask at Edgar, staring blatantly at Remus’ form as he moves through the press of silks and finery. “What, do you own him?”

Edgar doesn’t catch the accidental malice and grins wider, downing a draught of blood-dark wine with his teeth and bottom lip showing vulgar against the edge if his glass. “For the night, indeed I do. He isn’t cheap, but he’s a wonder.”

“Quite.” Sirius steels his nerves, plays the fool even though Edgar is one in the clownish mask— _Fuck you, sir, fuck you standing,_ he wants to shout, wants to deck Edgar’s splotchy face and watch that stupid shoehorn nose clatter across the floor with the force of it. Hell and ashes, this anger feels new. Righteousness? No. Call it protectiveness, useless on Remus who doesn’t need an ounce of protection at all. Perhaps that’s why this burns so deeply.

Edgar knows, somehow, that he and Sirius are two of the only known queers at the party and so seizes the moment of privacy to lean nearer and catch Sirius’ eye with an unnerving glint. “Have you ever rented? Because I can’t recommend it enough. If the boy’s clean and willing, it’s paradise.”

“I can’t say I have.” The lie is easy, and Sirius makes sure his face is cool and unlined through the following sip on the rest of his champagne. A server passes by with an unladen tray just as he finishes it, but Sirius holds onto the empty glass if only for something to keep him from throttling the man in front of him.

Edgar gives a little sigh, a wistful and dramatic thing he probably learned in Austria, and cards a hand through his slicked blonde hair. It doesn’t look half as casually handsome as he probably means it to. “I only wish he would kiss. Most of them don’t, you know, for the job of it.”

Sirius bites hard on his back teeth and clenches the hand in his trouser pocket. “He doesn’t?” Glancing unintentionally over at where he’d last seen Remus, Sirius’ mind kicks into a racing canter. _What do you mean he doesn’t kiss, he devours my fucking tongue like the body of Christ itself—_ a flaky laugh trips out of Edgar and Sirius is startled by how simpering it sounds.

“I was just as surprised as you! I had some in Vienna who would do everything short of throw themselves into the Danube for me, and then I come here and they won’t even deign to kiss. This island is falling apart, between you and me.”

Sirius can feel his eyes glassing over, sick of this man and sick of this party and needing very suddenly a quiet place to sit. His heart is rising in his chest with a strange mix of elation and confusion, and he would rather not vomit it up at Edgar Bones’ feet regardless of how much that might improve the look of the idiot’s shoes. “You aren’t wrong sir. Thank you for your company, if you’ll excuse me?”

Sirius dips half of a bow in farewell, already turning to the fresh ghost of a breeze from the garden doors to his left before Edgar has a chance to return the gesture. Sirius’ feet are crisp and quick along the polished ground, and he crosses from wood to marble to gravel in a short while. The air touches light and welcome against his cheeks below the lip of his mask and Sirius keeps walking, throwing himself into the wide anonymity of Lucius’ rose garden in a pattern he doesn’t bother to remember. He can find his way back to the manor from the throw of light and sound whenever he so chooses. The silence is welcome.

After a handful of minutes in which his quick pace slows to a wander, his mind still aflight with too many thoughts to catch just one of them, Sirius finds a stone bench in an empty corner of the hedges and sits heavily. His fingers are still gripped hard against the empty champagne glass and so he sets it beside him with a scratchy little _clink,_ leaning his elbows onto his knees and staring blank at the ground. The gardens are mostly empty of other partygoers and even then the only other amblers were lingering much more closely to the manor doors for the glow and the warmth, arm-in-arm with their companions.

_This is my companion, Lucien._

Remus _must_ have a reason for going by another name. Is Remus even his true name? Sirius has been so enchanted by it since their first night that he’s never bothered to dig for anything beyond that, not even a surname. He feels vaguely stupid and more than a little embarrassed before a fiery corner of him rises up and shakes its head. No, he should feel nothing but victory. Remus kisses him, enthusiastically and with an artfulness that makes Sirius’ knees nearly buckle when they meet twice weekly. Remus kisses _him,_ and likely him alone. It should feel like a win.

In the reality if the moment, it feels muddled.

Sirius sits on his own for an unknowable stretch of time while the music filters over to him on the thinnest of fingers. They’ve quit waltzing, thank God, and been reeling through something vaguely pastoral and slow-moving when Sirius’ ears prick up to hear approaching footsteps.

He rights himself and tidies the fall of his tailcoat, and Sirius looks up at the deep fold of the night to see who else might be wandering down the moonlight pathway just in time to divine the shape of a wolf’s eyes stopping several paces away. His pulse flushes through him like brandy, and Remus smiles a secretive smile.

“Room for two?”

“Is your name truly Remus?”

Sirius stutters around the question he hadn’t meant to ask, hadn’t known his body would make him ask. Remus’ lips twitch, either with humor or confusion, before he takes a slow step forward.

“Has the fool of Bones sewn doubt in you, my lord?”

Sirius frowns but doesn’t make any move to stay Remus from drawing closer. “Who am I to believe when you’re calling yourself Lucien, and then your client tells me you ‘don’t kiss’?”

Remus laughs at that, once and sharp, an animal’s laugh that shows his mouth. He sits at the other end of the bench, leaving two hands of tantalizing space between himself and Sirius, and fixes his wide-pupil eyes on the baron. “Apologies for my fucking foozler of a client. Yes, my given name is Remus.” The young man glances down at his feet for a moment, shoes polished brightly, and Sirius notices he’s forgone his hat. His hair shines like it had when he first came to Sirius, saint’s locks, holy locks, and Sirius’ gut tugs insistently at the memory. “I go by other names at my leisure, when I don’t wish for them to know who I am.”

Sirius allows the truth to sink into his skin like a fine perfume. He draws low breath after several moments of comfortable silence. “And so you wish for me to know you?”

“Cur fox,” Remus murmurs, gifting Sirius an unfettered smile that tugs his lips sideways over his top teeth, all the more alluring for the illusion of a wolf’s face overtop his own, “you’ve known me for a long time now.”

Sirius is on him before he’s entirely aware if it, shifting across the stone, arms sliding around the rent boy’s waist to pull him to and press their lips together, suddenly hungry for truth and sanity and the solace of Remus’ nearness. Remus responds immediately, and they trade the faint tastes of Malfoy’s too-sweet desserts and dry servings of drink until Sirius feels he’ll burst at all his seams if he can’t have Remus in totality, as the young man deserves.

“Come home with me tonight,” whispered fervently against Remus’ lips that curve immediately with an expectant grin. Sirius kisses him again, soundly, before he lets himself hear the reply, close to his ear and couched in hot breath;

“You always ask as though you don’t know the answer.”

—

They walk quickly around the back exit to the carriages, as though fire licks at their heels, but not with enough urgency to alert any other guests to their impatience—Remus’ stare alone could put the end of the world at quite a standstill were he ever faced with the eyes of armageddon. Sirius pays the coachman handsomely, a crush of bills into his bare palm to say flatly _Mayfair, Black estate, back entrance,_ and wordlessly dare the young man to say anything about the demigod stepping in ahead of him. Thankfully, their driver is the smarter sort who knows when not to speak his mind.

Once inside, the carriage trundles to a start and Sirius is acutely aware of both the sweet tension in the space between himself and Remus, in addition to exactly how long they’ve got to themselves in the solitary middle-dark before arriving at his manor. He slides the curtains of both doors shut as Remus removes his mask to place it beside him before fixing Sirius with a small and knowing smile.

“How did milord enjoy the party then?”

“Come here, you devil.”

Remus climbs into his lap without another spur and is licking into Sirius’ mouth with unfettered desire before he can snatch breath, his eyes falling shut to grip immediately at the rent boy’s thighs. Remus’ fingers work quickly at the ribbon holding Sirius’ mask to his face and slides it away after a moment—he pauses the press of his kiss to pull back and look at Sirius unmasked, afire, immediate.

“You rescued me from a very boring evening.” His voice is low in his throat but clenched with a sort of anticipatory husk, one that Sirius finds he enjoys quite a lot.

“Do you mean the party, or Lord Longnose’s quarters?”

Remus tosses his head to laugh at that, and Sirius surges forward to kiss that golden column if his throat bared. The young man’s joy dissolves into a whorish groan that makes Sirius dig his fingers deliciously into Remus’ flanks.

“Both.” Remus swallows when his voice cracks slightly around the word, and Sirius feels the skin underneath his mouth bob with the motion. “He’s new, I’ve only been in his employ for two weeks. His ‘nose’ isn’t truly so long, and he isn’t very adventurous.”

Sirius hums against Remus’ neck, inquisitive and half-distracted and only grateful beyond measure that he managed to steal the young man away from all the gilt and pomp and prying eyes. He pauses at Remus’ ear to nip once at the lobe there and murmur, “What does he like to do?”

“He sucks me.” Remus’ breath catches again, more intensely this time as Sirius takes his time rolling the shell of his ear between soft teeth again and again. “He doesn’t have me do anything to him, but he sucks me and puts his fingers in my mouth while he does it.”

“And do you like that?” Sirius can feel his own breath pushing back at him, hot and uneven, from where he speaks against the height of Remus’ jaw. Remus tightens his fingers in Sirius’ hair and nods the affirmative.

“It’s nice when I can shut my eyes,” he whispers, his own mouth at Sirius’ ear, “and pretend it’s _you_ bringing me off.”

An airy sound of encouragement rips its way out of Sirius at that, slamming through him on a force like Nike herself kicking his heart with winged feet. He crashes his mouth back against Remus’ and sharply cants his hips up, seeking contact and warmth and the press of nearness, and groans anew against Remus’ tongue when he receives all and more at once. They kiss madly, their hissing and huffing breath and the shuffle of fabric filling the carriage interior like a flurry of hushed secrets, tasting champagne and the tang of arousal in each other’s mouths as though learning the sense from scratch.

“Did you have him yet tonight?” Sirius’ demand is feral, frayed, hoarse when he rips himself away from their tangled lips and tongues for a dose of breath that fills him, surges into the branches of his lungs as he drinks deep on air tinged in every way by every facet of Remus.

“He didn’t pay me until we arrived at the party. No.”

_“Good.”_

Sirius dives back into Remus’ depths and allows his instinct to take over, that fairly canine pull of hunger and want that Remus mirrors so well it almost hurts to receive it. Sirius hardly knows what he aims to do with the rent boy, what sort of ending he sees for them in his carriage, for they’ve twenty more minutes before arriving home and Sirius knows he’ll implode within ten if he can’t seek some sort of release for the pressure that’s been building in him since meeting Remus’ eyes across the ballroom. His left middle and ring finger are pressing at the corner of Remus’ lips before Sirius realizes it.

“Do it,” he whispers, tremulous and daring, pulling back from the kiss but still holding himself near enough to feel Remus’ fast breath pillowing against his face. Remus’ eyes burn, bonfire eyes, inferno behind his golden irises, and he wordlessly obliges. His tongue slides between the offered fingertips and his lips close around them down to the second knuckle, and he stares deep into Sirius’ eyes as the wet heat mimics perfectly what Sirius has felt before from Remus on the part of his body currently aching with thrilled need.

Remus lavishes quiet enthusiasm on Sirius’ fingers, warming immediately to the tease of it, as Sirius watches with rapt approval. Remus moves both hands down from Sirius’ hair to hold gently at his wrist, guiding the fingers further into his mouth to take them in down to where they meet Sirius’ palm. His tongue traces the seam between the two fingers with agonizing accuracy and Sirius twists his hand slightly to thumb with sweet encouragement at the swell of Remus’ bottom lip.

“I’m going to fuck you,” Sirius murmurs, a dark wisp of command that feels foreign behind his teeth but still comfortable in his voice. “You’re going to sit on me and I’m going to fuck you until you spill here in this carriage.”

A trembling sound of need breaks from Remus’ voice, still muffled and closed around Sirius’ fingers, and he nods amid his oral ministrations.

“We have shy of twenty minutes before we arrive. Do you think I can finish you off before then?” Sirius finds with a rush that he enjoys the put-on authority, only ever testing it out in small bouts when he’s had Remus in the past: instructing the rent boy exactly how to use his mouth on him; ordering him to all fours, or onto his back, or onto his side with one leg up; hissing at him to be quiet when a gasp carries a bit too loudly or a cry leaps out unbidden into the private dark. Sirius has never drawn it out like this before, but then again he’s never been faced with the physical proof of Remus going with other clients before.

Sirius Black never used to think of himself as a jealous man. The present is doing everything in its power to amend that thought.

“Do it,” Remus parrots back at him in a shorn whisper, pulling off his fingers for just a moment to speak. Flint strikes hard in Sirius’ belly at that and he takes Remus by the jaw, spit-slick fingers holding firmly, to yank him into a hard kiss. His right hand slides over from its grip at the height of Remus’ thigh to deftly unbutton his trousers, a fine linen and wool blend of a high quality that Sirius barely registers for the presence of the ardent heat trapped behind the fabric. He pushes aside the inner layers of Remus’ underclothes, shuddering when Remus breathes a perfect moan onto Sirius’ lips as Sirius brushes against his cock. Sirius steels his resolve and doesn’t linger, instead seeking with his thumb the warm cleft between Remus’ legs. The rent boy’s thighs shudder sweetly as Sirius works him, dipping in shallow presses that are equal parts preparatory and teasing with their rhythm.

“You always enjoy this step.” Sirius feels bold and aimless but terribly free to hiss the statement into Remus’ cheek. The young man hums with breathless affirmation and nods, and Sirius takes his own turns to bite down on a gasp when Remus reaches down to undo Sirius’ own trousers.

“Hurry,” he has the audacity to plead, “I’ve been fit for it since I found you in the garden.”

Sirius growls, well and truly _growls,_ with enticement when Remus draws out his length and strokes it with a long pass of his fist. He sweeps his tongue back along those two proffered fingers again and, with an ecstatic _Oh!_ ripping its way out of Sirius’ lungs, guides Sirius’ own fingers to the head if the baron’s cock and circles them there thoroughly to slick his imminent passage into Remus’ body.

“You’re going to undo me someday.” Sirius doesn’t mean to speak the thought that smashes into his mind then, but Remus huffs a snip of bright laughter to hear it.

“You’ve undone _me_ more than you know, Lord Black.”

Sirius’ heart flexes, what does that mean? What does any of what they do _mean?_ He shakes his head, his thoughts unspooling; “Call me Sirius.”

Remus’ knees tighten where they’ve gripped onto Sirius’ hips then, and he shifts himself with professional surety as he guides Sirius’ cock to his entrance. He presses an agonizingly-slow kiss to the space just under Sirius’ ear, both their bodies a-tremble with anticipation. _“Fuck me, Sirius.”_

Holy fire bursts in Sirius’ chest and he knows his expression shatters along with it, vulnerable, eyes shut tight and eyebrows knitting together as he lets his mouth fall open slightly and begins pressing into Remus. He’s lost to it, the enveloping silk of their togetherness—the heat that devours him, the presence that covers him like a shroud, the beatific miracle of Remus’ legs falling open slightly as he sits back onto Sirius and aids that hungry push into his body.

Remus barely holds in a blissful, keening sound once Sirius is in to the hilt. “Move,” he gasps, rocking himself up slightly without giving Sirius a moment to catch desperate breath.

 _“Hold,_ just a moment, I— _you bloody fucking minx.”_ Sirius pants heavily against the curve of Remus’ shoulder, clothing skewed and baring the top of his collarbone, as Remus laughs a breathless jag of rapture and Sirius shunts all his concentration into not spending right then and there.

“Keep up, Sirius.” Tasting the baron’s name like honey, Remus is beginning to ride him steadily in the seat of the carriage. Sirius is torn between the compulsion to seize the rent boy’s hips and shag him roughly, or to simply sit back and let Remus work himself off. His cock twitches with a mighty pulse at the second thought, and Remus bites down on his own lip when he evidently feels it.

“What,” Sirius breathes, finally having enough of a grip on reality to plant a sloppy lick of a kiss against Remus’ skin.

“You liked something just now, very much.”

“You.”

“Just me?”

“Just you.”

Remus’ expression ticks, for the briefest second, into a staggering wash of vulnerability; his eyes soften, his jaw relaxes, his brows furrow ever so slightly. Sirius and every single layer of his heart are lost to it, immediately and completely, and he can only think to pull Remus into a deep and heady kiss. Their mouths tangle with all the unchained bliss of inhibition before Remus pulls back instinctively to draw sharp breath when Sirius rolls his hips up, both of them reveling in their beautiful theatre of sin—just the two of them, performing for naught but the chance to feel alive within one another.

Cock weeping and hot with arousal, Remus is the first to signal his impending climax. _Four minutes to go, well done._ “Sirius, I’m close,” the jagged murmur at his ear that yanks Sirius hard against his own arrival, is twinned like a fine wine to a feast with Remus working Sirius’ length so well, so easily—Sirius slides a hand up to Remus’ shoulder and holds fast to it to spur the young man on with the permission to come.

“As am I.” Sirius’ voice is rough as chaff and he doesn’t care, only seeks blindly the heat of perfection deep inside of Remus and deep inside his own spirit, dredged up to pour from his mouth in kisses and gasps and growls through their sex. He hears Remus’ air stammer around itself and then, with a shudder and a cry he let’s slip for its glory, Remus is spilling thick between them. His muscles tense and spasm and grip Sirius intensely, too much, too hot, too near, and it isn’t but another three strokes before Sirius bursts into Remus with his forehead curving against the rent boy’s shoulder and a low groan breaking over his tongue.

The sound of the muffled coach wheels on cobbles and the salt-sweet smell of their completion feel too-present in the nascence of afterglow. They catch their breath, clinging to one another, and Remus is the first to break the ringing silence.

“Yes indeed.” Supremely satisfied, a purr bordered with confidence and a slight rime of giddiness.

Sirius can’t help but smile. “Your modesty is harrowing.”

He pulls out from Remus slowly, venting another wisping moan when the wet pull of it sends bliss rocketing through his skin. He looks down and snorts with good humor. “Sorry to have ruined that coat.” Sirius plucks benignly at Remus’ waistcoat, dotted with a jot of his seed, and Remus rolls his eyes above blushed cheeks.

“You think these are mine? Please. Half the joy of having things bought for me is having you ruin them, you hound.” The insult holds not a single ounce of malice.

Sirius tries and fails to hold in another smile, and he ignores words to simply kiss Remus again. In two minutes, they’ll pull up to the back walk of Sirius’ townhouse in as close to rearranged as the two can get. Two minutes after then, Remus will likely be tugging at Sirius’ lapels to drag him into another round of kisses, against the wall on the stairwell or pressed back along one of the doors or, perhaps, the scroll of a stair bannister. Any number of minutes beyond that they’ll be abed, curled close in the rich linen of Sirius’ sheets, holding fast to one another as Sirius dreams he never has to let Remus go in the morning—never has to say farewell in the granite fissure of dawn, never has to ignore the pitting of his stomach when Remus kisses him quickly and says _Monday, my lord, I’ll see you Monday evening_ all in one breath while he pulls on his trousers.

But right now, in the immediate dark, they have two minutes.


End file.
